The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt: The Rules

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt

THE RULES

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Teacher Notes

Aim:

To have fun with maths.

To use lots of different skills

eg. artistic, photographic, performance, comic involving maths

To have something in the challenge for every member of the class not just maths whiz kids.

Timing:

Week 1

Introduction: Form teams in class time. Give them the Scavenger Hunt Sheets so they can devise their team name and war cry/anthem.

eg. QTπ, The Smart Asymptotes,The Quadratics,The Nerd Herd,Numerators, Number Nutters and The Vulgar FactionGive teams 1 week to gather or create scavenger items.

You will find a complete PDF file of The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt @ the end of the following post, plus a PDF file answer guide.

Week 2:

Students are to bring items to class.

All teams must perform their war cry/anthem. Other performance items should be presented.

Score:

Any calculations must be written down. All graphs should be hand drawn.

Teams should then tally their own scores.

Cross check with another team.

Prize:

The prize will be a dodgy trophy (see pic) that you buy at a Op shop/ secondhand shop.

Rebrand it.

Decorate with hideous ribbons.

And make a fuss. This is Parody Power and everyone is in on the joke.

The trophy should be awarded with great fanfare.

Perhaps, you could include a fanfare like this.

Mrs Yurconic math blog

Student Sheets

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt student sheets follow.

 

Student Name:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .                       Grade:. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Team Name:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Date Due:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  

Team Members:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Team War Cry / Anthem:

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Rules:

* Team: 2 – 4 members

* Aim: Teams score points for weird scavenger challenges.

* Each team must create a fun maths-themed name and team war cry/song.

* Scavenger Challenges: There are 4 Scavenger Challenge groups:

1. Maths Survivor

2. So You Think You can Add!

3. The Great Maths Race

4. The X Squared Factor.

* Points earned from each group are in order: 1, 1¼, 2 ½ and 4⅓.

* Teams must produce a minimum of 2 objects/creations from each group (Maximums shown below)

* Teams can get as much help as they like from anyone

  crazy enough to help them.

* The highest score wins the glorious

    Great Maths Scavenger Hunt Trophy as shown (above), but uglier.

1 Maths Survivor:

 

Challenge 1:

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt

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Students complete 2 challenges @ 1 point each: Minimum of 2, Maximum of 8

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 1 Maths Survivor:

* A cm/inch ruler

* Maths fridge magnet (not just X)

* Graph from a newspaper

* 16 fl oz cup

* Digital Scales kg or lb

* Mechanical Scales kg or lb

* Old Balance scales with weights (2 points)

* Scientific Balance Scales with gram weights (3 points)

* Log Tables

* Mechanical Tyre Pressure Gauge (1 bonus point to name the pressure unit)

* Protractor

* What is the National Standard for the height of a table and a chair?

* A maths badge

* A Times Tables Wall Chart

* Kids Wooden Blocks with Numbers

* Any board game that uses maths (eg. Snakes & Ladders)

* Pantyhose weight Vs Height Chart

* Bart Simpson Maths Saying written 20 times

* $1 million Monopoly Money

* List Ten Maths Movies (eg. Could be about a mathematician)

* Packet 1-minute oats that takes 2 minutes to cook.

* Product 99% fat free

* An exercise book with tables, length, area and volume conversion charts on the back cover.

* Any packet with use by date expired by one month.

* Newspaper or magazine pie chart

* Box of Cuisenaire rods.

* A statue of any mathematician.

* A key ring with a mini calculator.

* A maths coffee mug

 

 

2. So You Think You can Add!

Challenge 2:

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt

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Students must complete 2 challenges @ 1¼ points each: Minimum of 2, Maximum of 5

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2. So You Think You can Add!: 

* How many round-cut 8 carat diamonds will cover top of an A4 sheet?

* How many human hairs would cover the back of your (Werewolf) hand including your fingers assuming 200 hairs per square cm or 1,290 hairs per square inch.

* A set of scales in Stone. How heavy is a stone?

* Measure the length of your kiss in cm or inches. Show picture.

* Bring a slide rule. Show how to calculate 100 x 10.

* A pair of 40 denier tights. What is a denier?

* A t-shirt with π on the front

* How many golf balls would go around the equator? Diameter of golf ball= 43 mm

* Picture of a human Pentagon

* Arithmetic Progression of Stamps worth: 5c, 10c, 15c, 20c, 25 c and 30c.

* Picture of you calculating the angle of a pair of high heels using a cardboard triangle.

* Write the mirror image of every number from 1 – 20.

* Freeze three types of triangle into a cube of ice each.

* Bring in 3 size 24 buttons. What is the diameter of a size 24 button?

* Car batteries are labelled 12V but are more likely 12.6 volts. Plot a graph of % charge remaining Vs Voltage (V). You’ll find info here.

* If you buy an $120,000 Boxter Porsche and it depreciates in value by 25% annually, how much will it be worth when it is 1, 2, 3 and 4 years old? More info here.

* In 2012 Usain Bolt had earned $20 million up until the Olympic Games mostly through endorsements. He ran a total of 400m (100 m, 200m and 4x100m relay). How much does the fastest man on earth earn per m and, more interestingly, per second? Why is the relay faster per leg than the 100m sprint?

* An old maths exam paper of a parent or grand parent or a school ruler with their name on it. (Must be old)

* How many large cracked eggs would it take to fill a 50-litre rubbish bin?

* What does 24 carat gold mean? Write 24, 18 and 12 carat gold in fractions.

* If Usain Bolt could keep up his 100m-sprint speed, how long would it take for him to finish the marathon? How long would it take him to get to school from your place? Include map showing your route to school.

* Draw a skateboard deck width Vs skater height graph. Info here.

 

3.The Great Maths Race

Challenge 3:

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Students must complete 2 challenges @ 2 ½ points each: Minimum of 2 challenges, Maximum of 4 challenges.

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3.The Great Maths Race

* Make a protractor Anemometer and calculate the current wind speed. Conversion Chart here.

* Bring a sextant

*  The Brix number is used to measure sweetness. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution. What would the Brix number be for orange juice, Gatorade and coke? You will need to know the sugar content in gm for each drink ( Look here) and the volume of a coke can or bottle.

* Make a poster using maths symbols going off at a tangent.

*  Your growth chart for 10-year period.

* Width of the front of the school block in toilet paper sheets. You will find some handy measurements here.

* Bake a π pie

 

 

* Cook a Fibonacci cake

* Bring in a mock up poster (in waste paper) of all paper sizes from A8 to A0.

* How much do we spend per person each year on toilet paper? You will find information @ toilet paper fun facts. Yes! There is a Toilet Paper Fun Facts website.  We use an average of 57 sheets each per year and, say, a toilet roll has 350 sheets. You will have to price the toilet rolls.

* Prove 1 + 1 = 2 in the most complicated way you can.

* Demonstrate Pythagoras Theorem using Saltine crackers.

* Develop a maths clap chant. Team must teach clap chant to class.

* Make potato stamps of the surds: √2, √3 and √5 and stamp an equation.

* Use bubble gum to demonstrate the parabola to the class of y = x²

* Make an Origami Pentagon from a square

* Make a (with clothes on) photo of yourself as Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

* Make Pascal’s Triangle using jellybeans or rice grains

* If your hair kept growing at the average rate of 0.04 cm per day, how long would it take to reach the same length/height as you? Show calculations.

* Make a poster of Bernoulli’s Triangle 20 lines long.

* The fastest remote controlled car on earth, so they say, is the Traxxas XO-1, which goes from 0-62mph ( 0 – 99 kph) in just 2.3 seconds and can hit 100mph (160 kph) in less than five seconds. How long would it take for the remote controlled car to travel to your nearest Macdonald’s and return with fries at 62 mph and 100mph? Print out a map.

*  Research the height and weight of 10 famous ballerinas and plot these statistics on a height Vs weight chart. Is there a mathematical pattern?

* If a kangaroo can hop at 25 kph (15.5 mph), how long would it take to hop across the middle of Australia E to W?

 

4. The X Squared Factor

Challenge 4:

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt

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Students must complete 2 challenges @ 4⅓points each. No additional challenges allowed.

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4. The X Squared Factor

* Make an origami soccer ball

* Video of a pile of Lego sorting into a Venn Diag of shape, colour and bumps

*  Fill a matchbox full of rice. How many grains? How many grains of rice to fill an Olympic swimming pool?

*  Learn π to 20 places then annoy everyone. No. Just demonstrate this skill.

* Devise a way to simply measure the volume of a set of keys. (Go Archimedes Go)

*  Toast the area of a piece of toast into the toast.

* Draw a simple picture of mathematician on graph paper. Write the co-ordinates of major points [eg. (2,5), (5, 7) etc] in order so that someone else can redraw the picture without seeing it. Test it.

*  How many corn flakes are there in a 750gm box?

* Trap yourself inside a Matrix. Full points for most creative effort.

*  Give a 3-minute humorous talk on why fractions are vulgar.

* Devise a method to calculate the speed of ants around your house or the school. Now calculate the time it would take for an ant to finish the 100m Olympic sprint.

* Demonstrate n! from n = 1 to n = 10 in Lego blocks

* Bring in an Abacus and demonstrate how you multiply 96 x 72.

* Find the minimum aeroplane seat width @ Seatguru for British Air, Qantas and American airlines. Now calculate how many seats these airlines could fit across your couch @ home.

*Rewrite the 12 Days of Christmas Carol with maths terms. Sing in woollie hat and scarf to class.

* Sing the 7 times table to the class Opera Style.

* There are 1,070 dimples on a golf ball. The diameter of a golf ball is 4.3 cm. How many dimples per square cm? The diameter of a tennis ball is 6.9 cm, how many dimples would fit on a tennis ball?

* How many slices of bread to cover your country? How many loaves? You will find size and links here.  A pre-sliced loaf of supermarket bread is approx 10 cm by 11 cm.

* A large tube of toothpaste is 4.2 oz or 119 gm. What length of toothpaste squeezed in a straight line could you squeeze out of that tube?

* How much air is in an Aero? This can be calculated. By weight and by volume.

* How many 100s & 1000s or sprinkles or jimmies are there on average on top of a cup cake? Make an equation (That’s algebra, folks) using symbols made of sprinkles on cupcakes. Bring to class. They will be eaten.

* Rewrite Some of My Favourite Things from the sound of music using only maths terms. You can make clothes out of curtains or use old clothes and felt markers and whatever grabs your imagination to make a maths tie/skirt/shirt/hat to sing the song to the class.

* What is the probability that a peanut butter sandwich will land peanut butter if you get a fright and throw it in the air? Show trial numbers.

* How many channels can you surf in a 20 second period? If you had to get up off the couch, walk to the TV set, push a button and return to the couch, how long would it take to surf that many channels? Yeah! Like in the olden days.

* Make a complex tessellation using Cuisenaire rods or potato stamps you have carved. (Diagram below is not a tessellation but nice potato stamp art.)

Here are the The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt PDF files: The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt

Here are the answer guidelines: The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt Answers

What are maths teachers for, sir?

A major fast food firm, all right, McDonald’s has put the entire Australian Year 7 – 12 Maths curriculum on line and it is FREE!!! #mce_temp_url#

I never thought I’d be enthusing over McAlgebra or McTrigonometry or McX, but this site has been recommended to me by maths teachers and it looks great. Students can view worked examples of maths problems, hear the problems solved step-by-step, work at their own pace and even track their progress through the website.

  

  If the entire maths curriculum can be accessed for free on line what ARE maths teachers for? 

  Gather round mathspigs and I will tell you why we need maths teachers. 

  Maths is boooooring for the majority of students. It needs a maths teacher to breath fire into the concepts to make them interesting, relevant and exciting. Otherwise, students feel maths is on a par with re-translating the dead scrolls. 

Mathspig’s mission is to provide maths teachers with fun, pop-culture based, media-savvy maths to excite students about the whole idea of maths. These topics can be used by maths teachers in the same way retailers use ‘loss leaders’. Get them in the door and you can sell ’em anything…. almost!!!!!!

  Since maths teachers often moan about students not knowing their tables… here is a COOL MATHS GAME called

  MATH LINES : X-FACTOR which is all about using your knowledge of tables …quickly.  #mce_temp_url#

 This is how I would use it in the classroom. Get this game up on the Smartboard and call kids up one at a time to have a go!!!!!! It’s fun.

  And it is FREE  x FREE = FREE !!!!!!!!

 

It’s the Game of Pig for Maths Piglets?????

  Mathspig would like to thank Isobella and Georgia both 9 years old of Cottesloe , Perth, WA who let me have these wonderful drawings of pigs to put on this mathspig blog. 

 

 

 

What better way to celebrate such go0d mathspig work than to introduce you to 

THE GAME OF PIG on nrich.maths.org website. #mce_temp_url#

It can be played by maths piglets and all the members of the family. By the way, don’t think pigs are stoopid… this one might out smart you.

 Thanks Isobella and Georgia!!!!! 

And the point is …….

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did mathspig teach this student????? Maybe, I heard enough whinging in class. But as I explained. I loved maths like a pig in shxt. Find x. But what can teachers do for students who don’t see the point? You can go into lecture mode saying that maths is needed for Blah! Blah! Blah!

Chances are the boooooored students won’t listen. What’s the point of doing maths? Mathspig has the answer. Make maths fun. Start with fun. And end with fun.

So here is a motivational exercise Mathspig used on Fun Friday. It suits students from Year 5 to Year 8. I call it:

Random Object Bingo.

 You Will need: Small prizes and a list of questions.

To answer a question kids must hold up a random object found on them or on their desk. eg. The first person to hold up a…… purple pencil, red paper clip, fake tattoo, grey sock (very funny antics follow), drawing of a motorbike, etc You will know what sort of objects kids carry.

The first person to hold up the found object gets to answer the Q. If they get it right. They get a small prize. Kids love this game. It has that treasure hunt feel.

 

 

WARNING: The only mistake mathspig made while playing this game with Year 7 was to say – MID-GAME- ‘the first student to hold up …. Matthew stop pushing ……” You guessed. Within the blink of an eye, four boys held up Matthew!

Go to sleep counting Porsches?

     Here is an online counting game for Grade 1 Maths Piglets by Cynthia Lanius.

     It is very simple ….. but there is no counting fingers … or even sheep.   #mce_temp_url#

   Maths Piglets get to count beating hearts, tap dancing frogs and even Porsches!!!!!!! 

 

   Now  everybody sing along: What the world needs now is people who can count …. not just for one, but for everyone. What the world needs now is ……

All I Wanna Do Is Sing about Co-ordinates to You!!!!!!

Here are two links about graphs suitable for Year 7 mathspigs.

The first will link  you to the most dreadful song you are ever likely to hear about plotting co-ordinates on X and Y axes. The reason Mathspig is including this link is because it can be used by maths teachers as a threat.

If you do not work on your  maths problems involving co-ordinates I will sing this song. (Insert Maniacal Laugh Here)  Ha! Ha! 

#mce_temp_url#

 

The second link is to a ‘rooolly’ cool FREE online game about co-oridinates…. It’s a bit like Battleships but involves space ships.

     Spaceships Online Game:

#mce_temp_url#

Clip art of graph by Naomi Wright #mce_temp_url#